When Mr Singh attempted to run, Muse chased after him, wrapped a belt around his neck and dragged him back to the taxi. The men then told Mr Singh they would kill him if he tried to run.

The two were found guilty in the Victorian County Court last month of armed robbery, false imprisonment and making a threat to kill.

They both pleaded guilty to a charge of obtaining property by deception relating to the later use of Mr Singh's credit card.

Victorian County Court Judge Gerard Mullaly on Monday sentenced both men to three years and nine months in jail, with a non-parole period of two years.

Judge Mullaly said it was not clear how much was stolen, but said Mr Singh was traumatised by the ordeal. "The whole experience was frightening, the use of the belt was degrading, the threat was chilling," he said. "Taxi drivers are entitled to get through their shifts ... without being subject to violence."

Fuller report here. The above was only one of two taxi robberies committed by the charmers above

The latest black "game" in America

The game was called "point 'em out, knock 'em out," and it was as random as it was brutal.

The object: Target an innocent [white] victim for no other reason than they are there, then sucker punch him or her.

But on this day in Lansing, there would be no punch. The teen-age attacker had a stun gun. He did not know his would-be victim was carrying a legally concealed pistol.

The teen lost the game.

The 17-year-old in gym shorts approached his target. The 28-year-old Lansing man was waiting for his daughter at her school-bus stop at REO Road and Ballard Street.

It was May 29, and a nice day. Temperatures would reach 79 degrees. It was partly cloudy, fairly gusty.

The teen had two friends nearby - dropped off by a third friend in a van after they scouted their target. They knew what Marvell Weaver was going to do. They had discussed it.

Weaver approached his victim from behind, a black KL-800 Type Stun Gun in his pocket. It is capable of generating 1.8 million volts.

He passed him and turned back, pressed the stun gun into the victim’s side. Again and again, and … nothing. It had fired earlier when testing it, he would later tell police.

“The button was like stuck down … or something. I don’t know what caused it not to work,” according to a transcript of Weaver’s statement.

The intended victim moved quickly, pulling his stainless steel .40-caliber Smith and Wesson. It had a full 10-round magazine, and was worth about $900 police estimated.

He shot Weaver in his buttocks as the teen turned to flee.

“It happened so fast I wasn’t sure. I just know something was shoved into my side. I wasn’t sure if it was a knife, if it was anything,” he told police.

Weaver ran, sat down across the street, his leg going numb, bleeding. Pleading. “‘I’m sorry, please don’t kill me, I don’t know why I did that, I’m high you know, I just wanna go home,’” the teen told the man who had just shot him.

The man called 911. He told the dispatcher the teen was "terminally wounded" and that he was a concealed pistol holder.

"Did you shoot him?" the dispatcher asks, sounding incredulous.

A witness told police the man stayed by the teen and appeared supportive and non-threatening.

The teen was hospitalized with a non-life threatening injury. At first, Weaver said he merely removed the stun gun from his pocket to look at it and the man shot him. He later confessed to the attack, records show.

Police asked for an attempted robbery warrant. The prosecutor authorized a lesser charge, illegal possession of a stun gun, a maximum two-year felony. A plea-bargain conference was scheduled for last Wednesday, but postponed until Sept. 4. The teen is free on bond.

Former GMTV presenter is set to win senior role in David Cameron’s Cabinet reshuffle 'because she is northern'

Probably true. The English neurosis about social class and accent rivals the American obsession with race. A Northern English accent is very unprestigious so it calls for affirmative action

A former GMTV presenter is set to be a big winner when David Cameron reshuffles his government to bring more women into his Cabinet, it emerged today.

Esther McVey, who also worked on Children's BBC in her television career, is likely to win a promotion to a senior role, in part because she is 'northern', sources have said.

The 45-year-old, who became Conservative MP for Wirral West on her native Merseyside, is currently Minister for the Disabled.

But sources inside Downing Street have admitted she is likely to be promoted because No 10 'love putting a northern woman up on television to speak for the government', the Daily Telegraph reported today,

Meanwhile it has also emerged that the son of Iraqi refugees is also to get a top job from the Prime Minister.

Born in Baghdad to Kurdish parents who fled to Britain, Nadhim Zahawi, Tory MP for Stratford-on-Avon, made his fortune co-founding pollster YouGov.

Both he and Ms McVey are seen as good with the media and comfortable attacking Labour and defending the government.

Last month the Prime Minister gave his strongest hint yet that his shake-up of ministers expected shortly will dramatically increase the number of women at the top table.

Three years into the coalition, he insisted he now has a ‘much bigger talent pool’ to draw on to fulfil his promise that a third of jobs would go to women.

Childcare minister Liz Truss is tipped for promotion to the Cabinet as is Health Minister Anna Soubry, who was also a former TV presenter.

Only four women are full members of the Cabinet – Home Secretary Theresa May, Culture Secretary Maria Miller, Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers and International Development Secretary Justine Greening. Baroness Warsi, senior foreign office minister, also attends Cabinet.

Mr Cameron revealed he would use the opportunity to fast track women elected in 2010 to the upper levels of government. He said: ‘What I’ve done is consistently try to change the Conservative party. We went from 17 Conservative women MPs before the 2010 election to 48 women MPs. ‘That’s still not enough out of just over 300, but it’s progress.’

Mr Cameron has faced criticism for his failure to promote women in the past, amid claims he left two female Cabinet ministers in tears when he sacked them in last September’s reshuffle.

In 2009 he promised that at the end of his first term as Premier he wanted a third of all of his ministers to be female.

A mini-reshuffle of junior ranks was called off ahead of MPs heading off on their six-week summer recess in July.

A wide-ranging shake-up, including changes to the Cabinet, is now expected in the autumn.

It's a deadly weapon... if you're a fly! British shop asks woman to show ID to buy a FLY SWAT

A 33-year-old mother was asked for ID when buying a 99p plastic fly swat - because staff feared it could be used as an 'offensive weapon'.

Nicola Butcher visited her local hardware shop to buy the flimsy utensil when her kitchen became plagued with flies. But she was stunned when the assistant refused to sell it to her unless she produced her driving licence or passport.

The till - at Home Hardware, in Romsey, Hampshire - flashed up a warning sign, which indicated the fly swat was classified as an 'offensive weapon'. It means bosses considered the swat as dangerous as knives, fireworks, and lighters, which can only be sold legally to over 18s.

Mrs Butcher - mum to two-year-old daughter India - said: 'The fly swat is a flimsy piece of plastic - certainly not an offensive weapon. 'I’d like to say it wouldn’t hurt a fly but that’s probably the only thing it could come close to hurting. 'I could swat somebody with it using all my strength and I doubt it would leave even the slightest of marks or bruises.'

Mrs Butcher, who was recently made redundant from her project manager job at insurance firm Aviva, took the request for ID as a compliment.

She said: 'The number of flies has rocketed in the hot weather and unfortunately some of them have made their way from my garden into my kitchen. 'I broke my old fly swat from overuse and went to the local shop to buy a replacement. 'I only expected to be in the store for a couple of minutes but it turned into a bit of a drama at the checkout.

'The shop assistant - who was in her fifties - told me a warning had flashed up telling her the swat was an "offensive weapon" and she should check the customer is over 18.

'I thought she was having a laugh but she invited me round the other side of the till to show me the screen. 'We were both laughing and joking but she asked if I had my driving licence or passport on me, which I thought was ridiculous.

'I’m 33 years old and think I look my age but I did take her request as a compliment. In the end I had to get my driving licence out.

'How can an innocent plastic fly swat be an offensive weapon? What is the world coming to when you can’t buy a fly swat without producing ID for it.

'I can understand why you would ask for ID when you were buying fireworks, alcohol, or a high voltage electric fly swat - but not a cheap plastic one.

'The shop also sells spades and frying pans which would cause much more damage if I smacked somebody over the head with one of them.'

Lindsey Waude, the store’s assistant manager, said: 'We think it might be an error on our till system. 'Sometimes it flashes up that something is an offensive weapon, but our guy who does the computers has been on his honeymoon for three weeks. 'I’m sure the member of staff asked for it in jest.'

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Robert Woodson, founder and president of the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, said if Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., were alive today, he would not just talk about justice for Trayvon Martin, he would also pray for other victims of violence who are not minorities.

“We should not wait for evil to wear a white face, before we get outraged. Evil is our enemy whether it wears a white face or not,” Woodson said Monday at the Republican National Committee luncheon to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.

“If Dr. King were alive today, he would not be just talking about justice for Trayvon Martin,” Woodson said, “but he would also give a prayer for the 18-year-old man, for this little baby that was shot in the face by two black kids, or by the World War II veteran, who was beaten to death for $50 or the Oklahoma player who was killed.”

Woodson referenced the case of an 18-year-old man in Georgia who is accused of murdering a 13-month-old baby by shooting the baby in the face during a robbery attempt.

De'Marquise Elkins is currently on trial for the fatally shooting 13-month-old Antonio Santiago while the baby was in his stroller in March.

Woodson was also referring to Christopher Lane, the Australian baseball player who was fatally shot while jogging in Oklahoma last week, and the brutal beating of 88-year-old World War II veteran Delbert Belton. Three teenagers – two of them black are suspected in Lane’s death, and two black teens have been arrested in Belton’s beating.

“We should pray for the families of these fallen people as we do Trayvon Martin,” said Woodson, who is often referred to as the “godfather of the movement to empower neighborhood-based organizations.”

Woodson has been a social activist since the 1960s, when as a young civil rights activist, he developed and coordinated national and local community development programs, according to his group’s website. He also directed the National Urban League’s Administration of Justice division in the 1970s, and later served as a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Woodson also challenged the black community to be honest about black politicians who he said are using “those who sacrificed” for “corrupt purposes.”

“We must be honest about those black politicians who are standing on the shoulders of those who sacrificed and then use that position for corrupt purposes. We need to call them out, because they are moral traitors. They are moral traitors, but we’re silent about that,” he said.

A shocking video has emerged which appears to show the racially motivated bullying of a three-year-old white girl by her five-year-old black neighbors.

Two clips uploaded to Facebook and entitled 'When white people pi** black people off', show a heartbreaking scene - a little Minneapolis girl trying to play with another group of girls who are encouraged to hit, push and verbally abuse the toddler at the encouragement of an older boy off camera.

Outraged viewers quickly seized upon the videos as evidence of racism and unleashed a torrent of threatening calls at the parents of the bullying children - who had no idea the incident had been filmed, let alone posted online and rushed to apologize to the equally clueless parents of the victim.

In the videos, which have been watched with horror by over 250,000 people, a little girl is seen sitting on a plastic bike as two older girls yell, 'you ugly' at her.

Identified as Mackenzie Peterson, the toddler, who is sitting on her small tricycle is seemingly spat at by one of the girls, who has been indentified as being a neighbor and five-years-old. Another girl grabs Mackenzie's hand and begins to hit her with it.

'Why you hitting yourself? Why you hitting yourself', the older boy filming, identified as the 12-year-old brother of the girls, asks.

Beginning to cry loudly, the bullies leave the toddler in the middle of the street in her tricycle and another clip shows the girl off her trike and still attempting to play as one of the girls says 'hit her hard and slap her head like this.'

In a wrenching scene, little Mackenzie attempts to share a toy with one of the older girls, but the older boy interrupts and tells her to 'throw it on the ground' - which she does, causing the girl to cry and run to pick it up.

But as the three-year-old bends down to pick the toy up the other girls rush over to hit her.

Initially, the video was traced to a Facebook page for someone named Ray Wright, but that page has now been taken down and since revealed to be a fake account set up by the 12-year-old boy.

While the video mentions the race of all the parties involved, at no point is any racial language used by the bullies towards the little girl.

However, the problems began when the video began to spread virally across the Internet, leading to the parents of both children being identified.

Shocked and angered people began to make threatening calls to the father of the 12-year-old and younger girls, who has been identified by the MailOnline as 'Eddie' to protect his identity.

Viewing the video for himself, Eddie walked across to his neighbor Shawn Peterson to explain and apologize for his children bullying his daughter, which he had no idea about.

Explaining that the first he heard that hundreds of thousands of people had seen his daughter being bullied on the Internet was when Eddie told him, Shawn said that he trusted his neighbor to do the right thing. 'He's taking care of it. Trust me,' Shawn told FOX 9. 'He's a good father and everything like that, so I'm not worried about what he's doing over there.'

Refuting claims online from outraged viewers that his children were racially bullying Mackenzie Peterson, Eddie said that is not what his children are brought up to think. 'I honestly don't know where it comes from. We don't teach that in our household,' Eddie, the father of the girls involved, said. 'We're not racist, none of that.'

Eddie and Shawn said that their children usually play together and added that the incident had been blown out of all proportion.

'She's not that way. You can see she's -- they're -- clearly getting coached through the whole situation,' said Eddie about his five-year-old girl. 'When I saw it, I was disgusted with the video -- very disgusted.'

Eddie said that his 12-year-old son was being disciplined for his role in the affair, with his Internet and television privileges being taken away.

And while both fathers have said that the matter is in hand, police did confirm they stopped by to check on the situation, but left satisfied there was no larger issue.

Why is it suddenly taboo to say mother should stay at home with their babies?

My most vivid memory of my childhood is hovering outside our smart Kensington sitting room, which I was forbidden to enter, as my mother, a dressmaker, fitted garments to a series of rich clients.

‘Just a minute, darling,’ she’d say on the rare moments she popped out to get some more pins, in answer to any query of mine. ‘In a minute. We’ll see.’ And somehow my request would get forgotten, always second place to her work.

My mother always had scant interest in me as a child and I was brought up pretty much entirely by au pairs until I was eight, after which I was left to fend for myself.

True, my father was sometimes around, and what a wonderful father he was. But it wasn’t the same. Father was working himself, teaching life-drawing at the Royal College of Art.

It was my mother I wanted. I was an only child and I wanted her to make my tea, to care for me, show an interest. Not always, just sometimes.

That’s not to say Mother was all bad. If she had been a slightly distracted older friend or relative, she would have been fine. But as a mum? I’m afraid she wasn’t much good.

By the early Sixties, her neglect of me had deepened. By now, Mother was really interested only in her career. Indeed, she had been made Professor of Fashion at the Royal College of Art, a post so unusual for a woman that it merited a front-page story in the Daily Express.

Then, when I was 13 and after a series of pretty serious rows between her and my father, she left home for good. Father and I had to fend for ourselves.

My childhood had been so dreadful, and I felt my mother’s neglect so deeply that, to be honest, it was a bit of a relief when she left. At least I knew she was gone for good — none of this halfway house, being there one moment, abandoning me the next, which made me feel so insecure, so unstable.

These are the memories I draw upon in my role as an agony aunt. And whenever I am asked about working mothers, I remember myself sitting outside that living room for hours on end, kicking my heels against the chair on which I sat, desperate for some attention from Mother.

I thought of that sad scene last week, when I received a letter from a young pregnant woman who had just been headhunted by a top firm. They wanted her to start work as soon as possible.

Should she hand the baby over to her husband as soon as it was born, she asked? He was happy to be a house husband. She was keen to do it, but her friends had advised her not to. What did I think?

As an agony aunt of more than 40 years, I’ve often had letters on these lines and my reply has been the same, as it was last week.

Don’t go back to work straight away. Give the baby a chance to bond with you, for just a few months of your time at the very least, to give it a firm footing in life. Of course, you should stay home. A child needs its mother — certainly for the first precious months.

But my answer was met with waves of abuse. I was accused of not being ‘a feminist’. I was ‘mad’. I was ‘a relic from another time’. ‘It’s time to kick this agony aunt to the kerb,’ wrote one blogger. She declared that my advice was ‘kneejerk Fifties backwash’ which reeked of ‘vestiges of another time’.

People emailed me personally. ‘Your advice patronises and belittles the role of both parents,’ wrote one. ‘You show no knowledge or compassion for the role that a parent performs for a baby.’

Another damned me for writing a ‘biased, patronising, parent-hating piece’. The furore took off online, spread to Radio 4’s Today programme, where I attempted to defend myself, and has since been the subject of fierce debate.

It’s all been rather enlightening, to put it mildly. It’s shown me just how much the landscape has changed for working mothers today.

When I was young, mothers were made to feel guilty for going back to work at any time during their child’s formative years. But these days women are made to feel guilty if they don’t go back to work straight after having a baby.

One young mum who visited me recently with her nine-month-old said she was made to feel awful by her contemporaries for staying at home with the baby. People were always asking when she was going back to work.

But, as she pointed out, she’d found there was nothing as fulfilling and absorbing as looking after a baby. Although it was more demanding, it was far more interesting and fulfilling than her job, and beat working in an office hands down.

Indeed, the reasons I set out for encouraging the mother to stay with her baby for a year were simple and, I thought, reasonable.

This little mite would have been living inside its mum’s body for nine months and, like all babies, would be extremely bewildered and disturbed to leave the comfort of her cosy womb into a world outside.

Having your mum around closely for the first few months of life, rather than being left in the sole care of your father, effectively a complete stranger, is crucial. Lord knows I felt the full force of this myself, when my mother effectively abandoned me for her career.

The memory of the loss of my mother — for it was a loss, as profound as any grief — has shaped my own parental style, too. I simply refused to leave my son Will, who is now a father himself, and managed to sneak in hours as a freelance writer when he was asleep.

I didn’t want my baby to feel the neglect I did. But, more than this, I didn’t want to break the instinctive, intuitive connection with my child.

All devoted mothers will know what this feels like. Not long after my son was born, I remember having a party for a few friends at home. As he lay in a carrycot on the other side of the room, I had the all- powerful feeling that a piece of myself was lying over there.

I couldn’t bear to be separated from him for even a few minutes — that was my flesh and blood over there. It was the most extraordinary experience, and I couldn’t get enough of it.

But while my husband was totally besotted by our little chap from day one, there certainly was no such personality sea-change in him.

Obviously, there are times a mother must be separated from her child. And if a women tragically dies in labour, I’m sure any father would do a brilliant job of raising baby.

But if there was a choice, how many of us could argue against the intrinsic, biological bond between mother and child? Isn’t the kindest, most humane and positive approach to let baby be around you, Mummy, with your familiar smell, sound and touch?

Shouldn’t you gradually ease him or her into a brand new life until they are old enough to fully comprehend that dad is just as much ‘home’ as mum?

In my full advice to the pregnant woman who asked if she should go straight back to work, I said once the baby was old enough to feel just as secure with its father as with its mother, she could go back to the office — if she could bear to do so.

Indeed, most mums feel a real tug to stay with their children for longer than a year. Indeed, many can’t bear to give up the job of mothering until the child actually leaves home.

No wonder, then, that in a study of national happiness it was found stay-at-home mothers are more likely to think their lives are worthwhile than women who go to work. They tend not to suffer from boredom, frustration or feelings of worthlessness.

They certainly won’t ever feel that regret that some career women may well experience when they look back and realise that, however much they love their children when they’re older, they’ll never be able to re-capture those rapturous early months with their baby.

Despite the maelstrom of criticism I have received, my thoughts aren’t anti-women. I’m not anti-women working. I’m not anti-men, or anti-parent — or even anti-feminist.

I am one thing: entirely pro-child. After all, it is the helpless little child who is the one who is most often ignored when we begin to shout about women’s rights. So despite the criticism, despite the brickbats of the past week, I still feel the same as I ever did.

When I hear of mothers going straight back to work after having a baby, I wonder, if they can’t bring themselves to look after their tiny, helpless baby in those precious early days, why on earth do they bother having children in the first place?

British badger cull activists target farmers with campaign of intimidation... and cause death of a cow after setting herd loose

Too bad if cattle get TB, apparently

Animal rights activists fighting the badger cull were yesterday accused of causing a cow’s death. A farmer says extremists set his herd loose, leaving one animal to wander on to a busy road where it was knocked over by a van.

The incident, on a large cattle farm on the edge of the cull zone in Exmoor, west Somerset, is being investigated by police.

Protest groups are alleged to have carried out campaigns of intimidation as the badger cull began yesterday.

The locations where shooting has started have not been made public, but licences were given for two pilot culls in west Gloucestershire and west Somerset, with 5,000 badgers to be killed in six weeks.

Police have increased night patrols in the area, fearing violence between opponents and armed marksmen.

The National Farmers Union reported numerous ‘intimidatory’ actions against its members. One 70-year-old widow, who lives near Minehead, Somerset, has received threatening phone calls late at night despite not running a farm since her husband died.

The farmer who lost a cow, who asked not to be named due to fear of attacks, said the culprits left anti-culling stickers on the open gate to let him ‘know their motives’.

Lists of farmers in culling areas, with addresses and phone numbers, have been posted online, as have details of a firm that leases 4x4 vehicles to the companies in charge of the cull.

Stop the Cull, a peaceful protest group, put the details on its website so activists could ask farmers not to allow culling on their land.

The tactics resemble those of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, whose campaign against scientists and companies at a Cambridgeshire research site was likened to ‘terrorism’ by a judge who jailed seven members in 2009.

James Small, Somerset NFU chairman, said farmers across the county had experienced intimidation, whether or not they were taking part in the cull. He said: ‘There have been late-night phone calls, people knocking on the door claiming to be from the Government and even sabotage on the farms.

‘One said his gate was left open and a cow was hit by a vehicle. He’s reported this to the police, but everyone is trying to keep a low profile and get on with the operation.’

Gloucestershire NFU chairman Charles Mann added that farm gates had been left open and some members had torches shone at their bedroom windows at night.

The cull is an attempt to tackle a huge rise in cases of bovine tuberculosis, causing more than 305,000 cattle deaths in the past decade. Farmers say it is the only way to stop the disease, which is transmitted by infected badgers urinating on grass eaten by cows.

The trial will take place over four years and is predicted to cut bovine TB by 16 per cent. Defra and Natural England have concealed the identities of the two companies in charge, in case of reprisals.

Animal rights groups, which have gained support from guitarist Brian May and Dame Judi Dench, say badgers should be vaccinated.

Last week, the NFU was granted a High Court injunction banning protesters from approaching farmers’ homes, premises and cull sites.

While most protesters will carry out peaceful patrols of culling zones, some have said they will run near marksmen, forcing them to put down their weapons.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Chai Feldblum, President Obama’s EEOC commissioner – a lesbian activist who supports “plural marriage” – has called the clash between religious liberty and unfettered sexual license a “zero-sum game,” meaning that someone wins and someone loses.

Guess who loses in Feldblum’s book? She has “a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win” and candidly admits that liberals “want to revolutionize societal norms.” She believes that “gay sex is a moral good.”

She’s not alone. Here’s the latest example of Feldblum’s words in action. The Oregonian reports: “A same-sex couple who requested a cake for their wedding in January but were refused service by a Gresham bakery have filed a complaint with the state, alleging Sweet Cakes by Melissa discriminated against them based on their sexual orientation.

“Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industries’ civil rights division will investigate to determine if the business violated the Oregon Equality Act of 2007, which protects the rights of gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender people in employment, housing and public accommodations. …

“Rachel N. Cryer, 30, said she had gone to the Gresham bakery on Jan. 17 for a scheduled appointment to order a wedding cake. She met with the owner, Aaron Klein.

“Klein asked for the date of the wedding and names of the bride and groom, Cryer said. “‘I told him, “There are two brides and our names are Rachel and Laurel,”‘ according to her complaint.

“Klein responded that his business does not provide its services for same-sex weddings, she said.

“‘Respondent cited a religious belief for its refusal to make cakes for same-sex couples planning to marry,’ the complaint says. …”

Mr. Avakian then revealed what he views as a “fair and thorough investigation”: “Everybody is entitled to their own beliefs, but that doesn’t mean that folks have the right to discriminate,” he said.

Here’s the kicker. Read it closely: “‘The goal is never to shut down a business. The goal is to rehabilitate,’ Avakian said. ‘For those who do violate the law, we want them to learn from that experience and have a good, successful business in Oregon.’”

George Orwell much?

Get the not-so-thinly-veiled threat? Christians have a right to own a “successful business” in Oregon, so long as they don’t, well, be Christian – so long as they shelve their faith and submit to our ever-”progressive” government’s anti-Christian demands. “The goal is never to shut down a business,” but either you abandon the Judeo-Christian sexual ethic and dutifully observe postmodern sexual relativism, or government will shut you down in a Sodom and Gomorrah minute.

Brad, Rachel, Laurel and the rest of you left-wing bullies need to get this straight (so to speak): The godless left has been trying to “rehabilitate” Christians for over 2,000 years. We haven’t caved yet. What makes you think we will now? Those of us who wish to remain obedient to God will not – indeed, cannot – accommodate you and play along with your sin-centric “gay marriage” delusion.

Ain’t gonna happen. Ever.

Look, you have every right to dress up in two wedding gowns or two tuxedos, get pretend “married” and play house to your hearts’ content. You do not have the right, however, to force others to abandon their sincerely held religious beliefs, thousands of years of history and the immutable reality of human biology to engage your little fantasy. No amount of hand-wringing, gnashing of teeth, suing Christians or filing charges against those of us who live in marriage reality will make us recognize your silly so-called “marriage equality.”

Rather than trying to compel these Christians to participate in their counter-Christian mock marriage, all Ms. Rachel and Ms. Laurel had to do was take their business down the street. There are, no doubt, many bakers who share their worldly sexual morals (or lack thereof).

Imagine if a Christian came into a “gay”-owned bakery and demanded a cake with these words: “Homosexual behavior is shameful: Romans 1:27.” Think the left would be clamoring for charges against the baker if he refused? Me neither. In fact, I’d be the first to defend his right to “discriminate” against the Christian.

Or what if some anti-gun nut printing service refused to produce flyers for an NRA rally? Shouldn’t they have that right?

Or if some hippy bed and breakfast owner refused to host a conference challenging global warming alarmism. Shouldn’t he have the right to operate his business in accordance with his sincerely held beliefs?

Of course he should. And so should Christians.

But … But … discrimination! “Homophobia”! I know. Cry me a river.

Seriously, lefties, give it a rest. So-called “sexual orientation” laws are nothing like laws prohibiting racial, age, disability or gender discrimination. Those qualities are based on neutral, immutable characteristics. Even liberals admit that “sexual orientation” is based on “fluid” feelings and behaviors. It’s about what you do, not who you are. It’s about what you believe and who you choose to have sex with, not the color of your skin.

Ken Hutcherson, an influential black pastor from the Seattle area, put it well: “It has been said loudly and proudly that gay marriage is a civil rights issue. If that’s the case, then gays would be the new African-Americans. I’m here to tell you now, and hopefully for the last time, that the gay community is not the new African-American community.

“Don’t compare your sin to my skin!” he demands.

Some things never change. Other things do.

Today’s liberals seek to “rehabilitate” Christians to their way of thinking under penalty of law. Liberals of old just threw us to the lions. I guess that’s what they mean by “progress.”

Islamic TV channel fined £85,000 by British watchdog for broadcasting hate preacher's saying it was 'acceptable to murder anyone who disrespected Mohammed'

An Islamic TV channel has been fined £85,000 after it broadcast a hate preacher to instructing muslims to kill those who insult Prophet Mohammed live on live television.

Broadcasting watchdog Ofcom reprimanded Al Ehya Digital Televison, which runs the Islamic channel Noor TV for allowing its presenter to tell viewers it was their duty to murder non-Muslims during a phone in show.

The channel broadcasts both in the UK and internationally mostly in Urdu but also English and Punjabi and is aimed at young British Muslims.

The offending show was broadcast on May 3 last year and featured the presenter Allama Muhammad Farooq Nizami taking phone-in from audience members around the world.

Mr Nizami answered questions about a wide range of issues and personal conduct relating to Islam and Islamic teachings.

But following a question from a Pakistani caller asking what the 'punishment' should be for those who disrespect the Prophet, his answer was that they 'should be eliminated.'

Speaking directly into the camera Mr Nazimi said: 'One has to choose one’s own method.

'Our way is the peaceful way but when someone crosses the limits, faith-based emotions are instigated...The mission of our life is to protect the sanctity of our beloved Lord.

'May Allah accept us wherever there is a need [to kill a blasphemer]. We are ready and should be ready at all times [to kill a blasphemer]'

The regulator judged that these comments were 'likely to encourage or incite the commission of crime or to lead to disorder.'

It also said it was concerned that young people watching the show could become 'radicalised' or take 'violent and criminal action as a result of watching videos of Muslims with extreme views.'

It considered the remarks to be so inflammatory they could have inspired a repeat of the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gough, who was killed after Islamic clerics condemned his film which criticised the treatment of Muslim women.

In its ruling, Ofcom criticised Birmingham based-Al Ehya for not taking the comments seriously enough after concerns were initially raised by the broadcast watchdog.

Noor TV has however remained defiant and has not broadcast an apology for the comments, instead opting to broadcast a 'clarification' six months later.

Ofcom said: 'The Licensee [Al Ehya] has not at any point broadcast any form of apology for, or condemnation of Mr Nizami’s remarks, and neither on air nor in correspondence with Ofcom has the Licensee expressed its unequivocal regret that these comments were broadcast.

'The Licensee regretted only in its submissions that the presenter’s comments "may have been misinterpreted" and that he expressed his own political views during the programme.

'Taking all these factors into account, Ofcom was concerned that the Licensee has still not recognised the gravity of the statements made by Mr Nizami.'

But despite this the regulator decided only to give Al Ehya a third of the full £250,000 fine which it could have enforced because it said it wished to protect the station's right to 'freedom of expression.'

In it's judgement it added: 'If any financial penalty was to be so high that its effect would be to close a service down, then it might be a disproportionate interference with the Licensee’s and the audience’s right to freedom of expression in particular and exceed the purposes of imposing a penalty.

'Ofcom therefore carefully took this point into account and carefully weighed it in reaching its decision on the proportionality of the financial penalty.'

The fine announced today, comes three years after Al Ehya was fined £75,000 for appealing for viewers to donate money in return for 'prayers or the receipt of a “special gift” of earth from the tomb of Prophet Mohammed.'

Al Ehya Digital Television were not available for comment on the matter.

Last December Radio Asian Fever, in Leeds, was fined £4,000 for breaching broadcasting rules in programmes involving a presenter called ‘Sister Ruby Ramadan’.

She told listeners homosexuals should be beaten and tortured, adding: ‘Torture them; punish them; beat them and give them mental torture.’

Takbeer TV, based in Nottingham, has been found in breach of the code twice in 18 months for programmes which denigrated a minority Muslim sect.

For all those who think affirmative action always hurts white people, think again.

When auditors from the Department of Labor analyzed the hiring practices at VF Jeanswear’s Winston-Salem, North Carolina plant in 2006, they unearthed a problem.

The bean counters who for federal contracts parse exactly how many people of which gender and ethnic group can be working in any given company based on community demographics found evidence of mass discrimination — against white people.

In what most people would call a great example of a company reaching out to vulnerable members of a community who need work, VF had hired dozens of Montagnard refugees from Vietnam, people persecuted for their Christian beliefs in their home country, in its plant. The company even went so far as to translate employment forms into Vietnamese and hire interpreters to help community members apply for positions. To the government, however, this was a crime because as the Department of Labor noted in its 2011 case against VF, about 45 percent of its employees in the job group analyzed at the plant in question in 2005 were Asian compared to about 2 percent of the community qualified for the jobs.

The company also hired a larger percentage of Latinos than it should have based on demographic information. It hired about the same percentage of blacks given their representation in the community, but where it really failed was in not hiring enough white people. Whites made up about 8 percent of the job group analyzed but comprised 62 percent of the population qualified for that type of position. Perhaps recognizing the folly of suing a plant for not hiring enough white people, the Department of Labor created a new name for white victims, “non-Asian.” If you have not heard of this ethnic group before, you are not alone. The federal government doesn’t recognize a “non-Asian” racial category.

Seeking to compensate victims of the refugees’ sinister plan to have VF hire more of their friends and family, the Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) sued the company in 2011 in a case that is still ongoing.

At the heart of the lawsuit is the company’s employee referral program, which the Montagnards frequently used to recommend family and friends of the same ethnic background for open positions. The company did not control who submitted referrals, but the fact that the referrals were so lopsided toward one ethnic group was a problem for the government as the outcome of the process inevitably led to a disproportionate number of Montagnards receiving and accepting job offers based on the population as a whole.

Administrative law judge Kenneth Krantz earlier this month found that “The ‘non-Asian’ category upon which the Plaintiff has proceeded is neither a race nor an ethnic group, either by regulatory definition or as used in common parlance” and found in favor of VF — seven years after the plant whose hiring practices are under scrutiny in the lawsuit closed. The OFCCP is appealing the decision.

Jimmy Powell, an attorney for Womble Carlyle in Greensboro, North Carolina, representing VF, called the lawsuit “the worst example of bureaucratic bullying that I’ve ever encountered.”

He’s right. The government couldn’t use existing categories of race to sue VF so it made up a new aggrieved ethnic group — “non-Asian.” Worse, it is suing a company for helping a group of vulnerable members of the community that taxpayers were at the same time paying to help relocate, educate, and train for jobs.
If this were an isolated incident it would be a terrible example of government overreach. But it is not. It’s how the OFCCP operates. Read through its press releases for more examples of how the government uses the hiring audit process to bludgeon companies to settle cases for millions based solely on statistics and not actual discrimination.

They will make you think the OFCCP exists solely to inflict cruel and unusual legal punishment on companies large enough to have federal contracts. Add it to the list of departments that should be defunded immediately.

British judge orders Muslim woman to remove burkha during court appearance then bans her from entering plea after she refuses

A judge told a Muslim woman she must remove her burkha in court before she can enter a plea after she refused to reveal her face.

Judge Peter Murphy said the principle of open justice overrode the 21-year-old woman's religious beliefs, and warned there was a risk a different person could go into the dock pretending to be her.

The woman, from Hackney, east London, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, appeared before Blackfriars Crown Court today charged with intimidating a witness.

She said she cannot remove the veil in front of men because of her religious beliefs.

Judge Murphy told her: ‘It is necessary for this court to be satisfied that they can recognise the defendant.

‘While I obviously respect the right to dress in any way she wishes, certainly while outside the court, the interests of justice are paramount. ‘I can’t, as a circuit judge, accept a plea from a person whose identity I am unable to ascertain.’

He added: ‘It would be easy for someone on a later occasion to appear and claim to be the defendant. ‘The court would have no way to check on that.’

Her barrister, Claire Burtwistle, told the court the woman was not prepared to lower her veil at all while men were in the room.

‘In front of women, it is not an issue’, she said. ‘It is simply men that she will not allow to see her face.’

Ms Burtwistle suggested herself, a female police officer or a female prison guard could identify the defendant and confirm to the court that it is the same person as in the police arrest photos.

Prosecutor Sarah Counsell added that the police officer in charge of the case was content that he recognised the defendant while she was in the burkha.

But Judge Murphy rejected the suggestions, saying: ‘It seems to me to be quite fundamental that the court is sure who it is the court is dealing with.

‘Furthermore, this court, as long as I am sitting, has the highest respect for any religious tradition a person has.

‘In my courtroom also, this sometimes conflicts with the interests of a paramount need for the administration of justice. In my courtroom, that’s going to come first.’

The judge added: ‘There is the principle of open justice and it can’t be subject to the religion of the defendant whether the principle is observed or not.

‘I am not saying this because of the particular form of dress by this defendant, I apply that to any form of dress that had the same issues.’

Judge Murphy adjourned the case for legal argument over whether the defendant should have to remove her veil. It will be heard again on September 12, when the defendant is expected to enter a not guilty plea and go to trial.

The defendant is alleged to have intimidated a witness, in Finsbury Park, north London, in June.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Same-Sex Marriage Trumps Religious Liberty in New Mexico

Earlier today, the Supreme Court of New Mexico ruled that the First Amendment does not protect a Christian photographer’s ability to decline to take pictures of a same-sex commitment ceremony—even when doing so would violate the photographer’s deeply held religious beliefs. As Elaine Huguenin, owner of Elane Photography, explained: “The message a same-sex commitment ceremony communicates is not one I believe.”

But New Mexico’s highest court, deciding an appeal of the case, today agreed with the New Mexico Human Rights Commission and ruled against Elane Photography, concluding that neither protections of free speech nor free exercise of religion apply.

Elaine and her husband Jon, both committed Christians, run their small photography business in Albuquerque, N.M. In 2006, she declined the request to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony. In 2008, the New Mexico Human Rights Commission ruled that by declining to use its artistic and expressive skills to communicate what was said and what occurred at the ceremony, the business had engaged in illegal discrimination based on sexual orientation.

The commission ruled this way based on New Mexico’s human rights law, which prohibits discrimination in public accommodations (“any establishment that provides or offers its services … or goods to the public”) based on race, religion and sexual orientation—among other protected classes.

Elane Photography didn’t refuse to take pictures of gays and lesbians, but only of such a same-sex ceremony, based on the owners’ belief that marriage is a union of a man and a woman. New Mexico law agrees, as it has no legal same-sex civil unions or same-sex marriages. Additionally, there were other photographers in the Albuquerque area who could have photographed the ceremony.

Today’s decision highlights the increasing concern many have that anti-discrimination laws and same-sex marriage run roughshod over the rights of conscience and religious liberty. Thomas Messner, a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation, has documented multiple instances in which laws forbidding discrimination based on sexual orientation, as well as laws redefining marriage, already have eroded religious liberty and the rights of conscience. Indeed, earlier this year, the United States Commission on Civil Rights held an entire hearing on conflicts between nondiscrimination policies and civil liberties such as religious freedom.

In a growing number of incidents, government hasn’t respected the beliefs of Americans. Citizens must insist that government not discriminate against those who hold to the historic definition of marriage. Policy should prohibit the government—or anyone who receives taxpayers’ dollars—from discriminating in employment, licensing, accreditation or contracting against those who believe marriage is the union of a man and a woman.

We also must work to see marriage law reflect the truth about marriage. If marriage is redefined, believing what virtually every human society once believed about marriage—that it is the union of a man and a woman ordered to procreation and family life—would be seen increasingly as an irrational prejudice that ought to be driven to the margins of culture. The consequences for religious believers are becoming apparent.

The French and British empires historically had different premises, with the former (in the Roman tradition) focused more on culture and the latter more on race, hierarchy, and family. This difference took many forms: one finds meals of bifteck-frites in tiny towns in the former French colony of Niger but little English food even in the cities of neighboring Nigeria. Léopold Senghor of Senegal became a significant French poet and cultural figure whereas Rabindranath Tagore of Bengal could never transcend his Indian origins.

Charles de Gaulle was Time magazine's man of the year in 1959, the year he delivered his anti-Arab remarks.

Likewise, French and British politicians responded to the initial post-World War II immigration of non-Western peoples to their countries in characteristically different ways. Charles de Gaulle, arguably the most important leader of France since Napoleon, focused on culture while Enoch Powell, a rising star in the United Kingdom, emphasized race.

Here are their speeches on the topic, starting with de Gaulle (1890-1970), who spoke on March 5, 1959:

"It is very good that there are yellow French, black French, brown French. They show that France is open to all races and has a universal vocation. But [it is good] on condition that they remain a small minority. Otherwise, France would no longer be France. We are still primarily a European people of the white race, Greek and Latin culture, and the Christian religion.

Don't tell me stories! Muslims, have you gone to see them? Have you watched them with their turbans and jellabiyas? You can see that they are not French! Those who advocate integration have the brain of a hummingbird. Try to mix oil and vinegar. Shake the bottle. After a second, they will separate again.

Arabs are Arabs, the French are French. Do you think the French body politic can absorb ten million Muslims, who tomorrow will be twenty million, after tomorrow forty? If we integrated, if all the Arabs and Berbers of Algeria were considered French, would you prevent them to settle in France, where the standard of living is so much higher? My village would no longer be called Colombey-The-Two-Churches but Colombey-The-Two-Mosques."

Enoch Powell (1912–1998), a conservative British politician, gave his "Rivers of Blood" speech on April 20, 1968, in which he predicted disaster because of large-scale immigration of colored people to the United Kingdom. He began by noting what was taking place: a

"total transformation to which there is no parallel in a thousand years of English history. In fifteen or twenty years, on present trends, there will be in this country 3 ½ million Commonwealth immigrants and their descendants. … Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependents, who are for the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant-descended population. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre."

In addition to ending immigration, Powell called for re-emigration, or the return of immigrants to their countries of origin.

"If all immigration ended tomorrow, the rate of growth of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population would be substantially reduced, but the prospective size of this element in the population would still leave the basic character of the national danger unaffected. This can only be tackled while a considerable proportion of the total still comprises persons who entered this country during the last ten years or so. Hence the urgency of implementing now the second element of the Conservative Party's policy: the encouragement of re-emigration."

He also wanted to end what he perceived as favoritism toward immigrants:

"all who are in this country as citizens should be equal before the law and that there shall be no discrimination or difference made between them by public authority. … This does not mean that the immigrant and his descendants should be elevated into a privileged or special class or that the citizen should be denied his right to discriminate in the management of his own affairs between one fellow citizen and another."

On this topic, Powell soared rhetorically:

"There could be no grosser misconception of the realities than is entertained by those who vociferously demand legislation as they call it "against discrimination", whether they be leader-writers of the same kidney and sometimes on the same newspapers which year after year in the 1930s tried to blind this country to the rising peril which confronted it, or archbishops who live in palaces, faring delicately with the bedclothes pulled right over their heads."

Finally, Powell inveighed against integration.

"To be integrated into a population means to become for all practical purposes indistinguishable from its other members. Now, at all times, where there are marked physical differences, especially of colour, integration is difficult though, over a period, not impossible."

And on to the finale:

"As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see "the River Tiber foaming with much blood."

This speech effectively ended Powell's once promising political career.

Comments:

(1) These two statements have much wider support today than when they were delivered, 54 and 45 years ago, respectively.

(2) At the same time, no major politician today would dare speak as directly as these two did back then.

Sometimes I wonder when black people will reject the patronizing insults of white progressives and their black handmaidens. After CNN's Piers Morgan's interview with the key witness in the George Zimmerman trial, he said: "Rachel Jeantel is not uneducated. She's a smart cookie." That's a remarkable conclusion. Here's a 19-year-old young lady, still in high school, who cannot read cursive and appears to be barely literate. Morgan may have meant Jeantel is smart -- for a black person.

Progressives treat blacks as victims in need of kid glove treatment and special favors, such as racial quotas and preferences. This approach has been tried in education for decades and has revealed itself a failure. I say it's time we explore other approaches. One approach is suggested by sports. Blacks excel -- perhaps dominate is a better word -- in sports such as basketball, football and boxing to such an extent that blacks are 80 percent of professional basketball players, are 66 percent of professional football players and, for decades, have dominated most professional boxing categories.

These outcomes should raise several questions. In sports, when have you heard a coach explain or excuse a black player's poor performance by blaming it on a "legacy of slavery" or on that player's being raised in a single-parent household? When have you heard sports standards called racist or culturally biased? I have yet to hear a player, much less a coach, speak such nonsense. In fact, the standards of performance in sports are just about the most ruthless anywhere. Excuses are not tolerated. Think about it. What happens to a player, black or white, who doesn't come up to a college basketball or football coach's standards? He's off the team. Players know this, and they make every effort to excel. They do so even more if they have aspirations to be a professional player. By the way, blacks also excel in the entertainment industry -- another industry in which there's ruthless dog-eat-dog competition.

Seeing as blacks have demonstrated an ability to thrive in an environment of ruthless competition and demanding standards, there might be some gains from a similar school environment. Maybe we ought to have some schools in which youngsters are loaded up with homework, frequent tests and demanding, top-notch teachers. In such schools, there would be no excuses for anything. Youngsters cut the mustard, or they're kicked out and put into some other school. I'm betting that a significant number of black youngsters would prosper in such an environment, just as they prosper in the highly competitive sports and entertainment environments.

Progressives' agenda calls for not only excuse-making but also dependency. Nowhere is this more obvious than it is in their efforts to get as many Americans as they can to be dependent on food stamps; however, in this part of their agenda, they offer racial equal opportunity. During President Barack Obama's years in office, the number of people receiving food stamps has skyrocketed by 39 percent. Professor Edward Lazear, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers from 2006-09, wrote in a Wall Street Journal article titled "The Hidden Jobless Disaster" (June 5, 2013) that research done by University of Chicago's Casey Mulligan suggests "that because government benefits are lost when income rises, some people forgo poor jobs in lieu of government benefits --unemployment insurance, food stamps and disability benefits among the most obvious." Government handouts probably go a long way toward explaining the unprecedented number of Americans, close to 90 million, who are no longer looking for work.

This is all a part of the progressive agenda to hook Americans, particularly black Americans, on government handouts. In future elections, they will be able to claim that anyone who campaigns on cutting taxing and spending is a racist. That's what Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., said in denouncing the Republican 1994 call for tax cuts. He said, "It's not 'spic' or 'n****r' anymore. (Instead,) they say, 'Let's cut taxes.'"

When black Americans finally recognize the harm of the progressive agenda, I'm betting they will be the nation's most conservative people, for who else has been harmed by progressivism as much?

Despite his “concerns about [the] government limiting parental choice on the care and treatment of their own children,” Governor Chris Christie signed into law a ban on ex-gay therapy for minors, thereby committing an outrageous act against both the people of New Jersey and his own Catholic faith.

Buying into the standard gay activist talking points, Christie explained that “on issues of medical treatment for children we must look to experts in the field to determine the relative risks and rewards,” because of which he felt this government intrusion into doctor-patient relationships was justified.

As for Christie’s personal views, he stated that, “I've always believed that people are born with the predisposition to be homosexual. And so I think if someone is born that way it's very difficult to say then that's a sin. But I understand that my church says that, but for me personally I don't look at someone who is homosexual as a sinner.”

New Jersey is now the second state to sign a ban on “sexual orientation change efforts” (SOCE) for those under 18, even with parental consent, following California (surprise!), although the California bill has already been challenged in the courts.

On a practical level, this means that a 17-year-old girl who was raped at the age of 14 and now feels a repulsion towards men and an attraction towards women cannot seek professional help to get to the root of her feelings, even if her parents back her decision.

That same young woman, however, would be allowed to seek professional help to develop her lesbian identity, even without the backing of her parents.

This is equality under the law? This is tolerance? This is a victory in the war against bigotry and discrimination?

And if this same young woman lived in California and was convinced that she was actually a boy trapped in a girl’s body, she could now choose to use the boys’ bathroom and even play on the boys’ basketball team, without any scientific diagnosis required.

In fact, it would be perfectly legal for her to undergo hormone therapy to help make her more masculine, soon to be followed by sex-change surgery. Yet if she said, “For many reasons, I’m uncomfortable with my same-sex attractions,” it would be illegal for her to receive counseling. What kind of madness is this?

Gender is now entirely subjective, based on nothing more than one’s personal perceptions, while sexual and romantic attractions are allegedly innate and immutable. Put another way, you are not necessarily born male or female, despite the biological and chromosomal evidence, and you can change from male to female. But you are born gay, and you cannot possibly change to straight.

What about all those who claim to have changed sexual orientation?

They are to be vilified, mocked, discounted, and silenced. In fact, they can be freely discriminated against, as Grammy Award winner and gospel superstar Donnie McClurkin just learned when Washington DC Mayor Vincent Gray disinvited him “from performing at a concert commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1963 civil rights March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream.’”

Why? Because he broke one of today’s biggest PC commandments, namely, “Thou shalt not be ex-gay,” which McClurkin is, which means that being gay is not innate and immutable. (This would have to be admitted, at least for some people.)

Yet the McClurkins of this world are now ignored (and worse) while testimony from someone like Brielle Goldani (born a male), which was apparently fabricated based on a movie script, helped push the New Jersey ban through.

What about the overwhelming scientific evidence demonstrating clearly that SOCE is harmful and destructive? It doesn’t exist.

Christie relied on a study conducted by a task force appointed by the American Psychological Association (APA) in 2007 which concluded that “efforts to change sexual orientation are unlikely to be successful and involve some risk of harm, contrary to the claims of SOCE practitioners and advocates.”

Yet this task force consisted entirely of gay activist psychologists and their allies, which would be the equivalent of asking Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to head a study of whether racial discrimination against blacks existed in America or asking Al Gore and Greenpeace to investigate whether man-made global warming existed.

In fact, gay activist bias in the APA has become so extreme that no less a figure than Dr. Nicholas Cummings, a past president of the APA, has become an outspoken critic of the attack on SOCE, arguing in a recent USA Today editorial that, “A political agenda shouldn’t prevent gays and lesbians who desire to change from making their own decisions.”

Dr. Cummings states that he personally helped “hundreds” of homosexuals change their orientation to heterosexual while helping many others “attain a happier and more stable homosexual lifestyle.” (Cummings, it should be noted, is a self-described life-long liberal who supports same-sex “marriage.”)

He writes that “contending that all same-sex attraction is immutable is a distortion of reality. Attempting to characterize all sexual reorientation therapy as ‘unethical’ violates patient choice and gives an outside party a veto over patients’ goals for their own treatment.”

He adds that, “Whatever the situation at an individual clinic, accusing professionals from across the country who provide treatment for fully informed persons seeking to change their sexual orientation of perpetrating a fraud serves only to stigmatize the professional and shame the patient.”

Gov. Christie has now become party to government intrusion on doctor-patient relationships, thereby serving as a useful pawn of the gay activist agenda, perhaps to his temporary political gain.

But when common sense and compassion prevail again, Gov. Christie’s decision will only serve to stigmatize and shame him.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

Monday, August 26, 2013

A businessman who confronted a burglar raiding his premises appeared in court yesterday accused of attacking him.

Andrew Woodhouse, 43, was chasing thieves off his property when he claims one of them 'came at' him with a wooden stick.

Father-of-five Woodhouse allegedly used the stick to injure the man's legs before holding him down while his wife called the police.

But when officers arrived they arrested Woodhouse and held him in a cell for 18 hours.

He appeared at Newport Crown Court yesterday charged with grievous bodily harm with intent which has a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Andrew Taylor, defending, said: 'Mr Woodhouse apprehended two of the burglars at his tyre depot. 'It happened after two or three men decided they were going to remove a large quantity of diesel from his premises.

'Mr Woodhouse has been interviewed by police and has provided a full explanation about what happened. 'There is a CCTV recording of the incident and we are waiting to see the footage.'

Woodhouse denies the charge and was given bail until next month.

A Facebook page has been set up in support of Woodhouse, of Abergavenny, South Wales with more than 2,000 supporting him.

Woodhouse was in bed with his wife Lisa at their detached home in the village of Govilon, near Abergavenny, when his burglar alarm went off at about 12.30am. The alarm is fitted to his business premises on an industrial estate a mile from his six-bedroom £350,000 home.

Woodhouse drove to his business premises where the alleged assault happened.

His wife Lisa said her husband was prepared to go through the legal process to clear his name. She said: 'But I fail to see where there was any intent on Andrew's part. 'He didn't intend to get up in the middle of the night to assault anyone. All he did was protect his property.

'People may think he took the law into his own hands but what was he supposed to do, stand by and watch?'

Woodhouse employs six staff including two of his sons at the family business, which was set up 20 years ago.

The firm has lost £15,000 in recent years to thefts of diesel and tools.

Two fuel thieves who stole £50 worth of diesel from Woodhouse's premises on the night of the alleged assault have been dealt with in court. Timothy Cross, 31, and Kevin Green, 52, took two jerry cans of diesel from Woodhouse's tyre depot in Abergavenny. Cross and Green both admitted theft and were fined £75 by Cwmbran magistrates.

New York City seems on the verge of making the same mistake that Detroit made 40 years ago. The mistake is to abolish the NYPD practice referred to as stop and frisk.

It's more accurately called stop, question and frisk. People were stopped and questioned 4.4 million times between 2004 and 2012. But the large majority were not frisked.

The effectiveness of this police practice, initiated by Mayor Rudy Giuliani in 1994 and continued by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is not in doubt. The number of homicides -- the most accurately measured crime -- in New York fell from a peak of 2,605 in 1990 to 952 in 2001, Giuliani's last year in office, to just 414 in 2012.

Nevertheless, the three leading Democratic mayoral candidates in the city's September primary all have pledged to end stop and frisk. And last week, federal judge Schira Scheindlin, in a lawsuit brought by 19 men who have been stopped and frisked, found that the practice is unconstitutional and racially discriminatory.

Bloomberg has promised to appeal, and several of Scheindlin's decisions in high-profile cases have been reversed. But the leading Democratic candidates for mayor promise, if elected, to drop the appeal.

The two leading Republican candidates support stop and frisk, but their chances of election seem dim in a city that voted 81 percent for Barack Obama in 2012.

What riles opponents of stop and frisk is that a high proportion of those stopped are young black and Hispanic males. Many innocent people undoubtedly and understandably resent being subjected to this practice. No one likes to be frisked, including the thousands of airline passengers who are every day.

But young black and, to a lesser extent, Hispanic males are far, far more likely than others to commit (and be victims of) violent crimes, as Bloomberg points out. I take no pleasure in reporting that fact and wish it weren't so.

This was recognized by, among others, Jesse Jackson, who in 1993 said, "There is nothing more painful for me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start to think about robbery and then look around and see it's somebody white and feel relieved."

You can get an idea about what could happen in New York by comparing it with Chicago, where there were 532 homicides in 2012. That's more than in New York, even though New York's population is three times as large.

One Chicagoan who supports stop and frisk is the father of Hadiya Pendleton, the 15-year-old girl shot down a week after singing at Barack Obama's second inauguration. "If it's already working, why take it away?" he told the New York Post. "If that was possible in Chicago, maybe our daughter would be alive."

Chicago and New York both have tough gun control laws. But bad guys can easily get guns in both cities.

The difference, as the New York Daily News's James Warren has pointed out, is that frequent stops and frisks combined with mandatory three-year sentences for illegal possession of a gun mean that bad guys in New York don't take them out on the street much.

Stop and frisk makes effective the otherwise ineffective gun control that Bloomberg so strongly supports.

An extreme case of what happens when a city ends stop and frisk is Detroit. Coleman Young, the city's first black mayor, did so immediately after winning the first of five elections in 1973.

In short order Detroit became America's murder capital. Its population fell from 1.5 million to 1 million between 1970 and 1990. Crime has abated somewhat since the Young years, but the city's population fell to 713,000 in 2010 -- just over half that when Young took office.

People with jobs and families -- first whites, then blacks -- fled to the suburbs or farther afield. Those left were mostly poor, underemployed, in too many cases criminal -- and not taxpayers. As a result, the city government went bankrupt last month.

New York has strengths Detroit always lacked. But it is not impervious to decline. After Mayor John Lindsay ended tough police practices, the city's population fell from 7.9 million in 1970 to 7.1 million in 1980.

Those who decry stop and frisk as racially discriminatory should remember who is hurt most by violent crime -- law-abiding residents of high-crime neighborhoods, most of them black and Hispanic, people like Hadiya Pendleton.

Canadians routinely bend over backwards to people who are new to or rough with English. It’s simply unfair to cry “discrimination” when just once things don’t turn out perfectly.

Hai Xia Sun is doing just that after her experience at a Richmond, B.C., McDonald’s.

Sun didn’t get what she ordered. She wanted to correct the mistake but says the manager sent her away saying, “You don’t understand English … The line is long. I want to serve other people.”

Sun has the Chinese Canadian National Council on her team now — their executive director labelling the experience “unacceptable.” Now Sun doesn’t just want a simple apology. She wants a written one from the franchise owner, the manager and she wants it made out to all Canadians who aren’t native English speakers.

And that’s where this gets out of hand. Not having witnessed the event, we don’t know the details. Perhaps the manager was a jerk to her.

McDonald’s will likely deliver some sort of apology — along with some gift certificates — because that’s what customer-service savvy companies do. Even when it’s unclear who is in the wrong.

But for this to be blown up into a story of discrimination borders on a shakedown.

Here’s a little predicament I’m hoping the CCNC can help me with: I lived close to the Spadina Chinatown in Toronto for years. I frequently went to the various shops there. On many occasions when I asked for assistance the shopkeeper didn’t understand me. Sometimes they’d get their son or grandson to help, but just as often I’d be left to myself. There were even times when I was smirked at. Did I make a fuss? Did I even think to cry discrimination because I wasn’t served in English in Canada? No. I just sucked it up.

Now, are the various Chinese associations in this country going to issue a written apology to not just me but all native-born English speakers for the decades of crummy customer service we’ve received?

Sun, who has lived in Canada for 10 years and whose son suggests McDonald’s solution should be to hire Mandarin speakers, is pushing her luck. It’s a bit much to cry foul because just once we didn’t roll out the red carpet for her when she made chopped liver of the language of Shakespeare. She was treated like how the rest of us would be if we lived in a foreign country. When I spent a summer in Mexico I didn’t speak Spanish. Some residents spoke English and others didn’t. That was entirely my problem to deal with. So I stepped out the door everyday wearing my big-boy pants and didn’t cry about it.

Canada’s obsession with glorifying balkanized mosaic-style immigration, as opposed to the American melting-pot approach, has had terrible results. It makes newcomers think that not only are they entitled to endless accommodation from English-speakers, but that they have a discrimination case on their hands when they don’t get it and they should not be expected to return the favour.

Canadians are caring neighbours. All city dwellers know what it’s like to help a lost tourist or newcomer with abysmal English find the address they’re seeking. We’re patient. We’d never leave them stranded. The bottom line is the manager should probably have been nicer to Sun, but she should also brush up on her English. If she can’t properly order a coffee without it turning into a national scandal, how does she expect to accomplish anything else in society?

Australia: Privacy legislation could have a `chilling effect' on freedom of speech

UNLESS the federal government abandons or radically changes its plans for a new way of suing for privacy, publishers and broadcasters face years of legal uncertainty that will have a "chilling effect" on free speech, media lawyers have warned.

"Privacy can be as wide as you want it to be," said Justin Quill of Kelly Hazell Quill.

"Even if this is never used, its mere existence will have a chilling effect and will lead to news editors taking out facts from stories for fear of being sued," he said.

His concerns are in line with those of media lawyer Nic Pullen of HWL Ebsworth, who was worried about uncertainty because the planned civil action "will hand everything over to the judges".

In 2008, the Australian Law Reform Commission recommended that the government should enact a privacy tort, but should not state clearly which areas of life would fall within its scope.

"Clear lines demarcating areas in which privacy can be enjoyed should not be drawn in advance," the commission's report said.

It recommended that the new cause of action should arise whenever there is a "reasonable expectation" of privacy and a serious invasion of privacy takes place that is considered highly offensive.

The commission favoured "leaving it open to the courts to determine when a reasonable expectation of privacy exists".

This "should not be limited to activities taking place in the home or in private places".

But the ALRC said it was in favour of what it described as "the narrower view" of the circumstances in which "a public act can be private". An example was when Britain's Mirror newspaper was found to have breached the privacy of model Naomi Campbell, who had drug problems, by publishing a picture of her on a street outside Narcotics Anonymous. The paper had to pay more than pound stg. 1 million in legal costs.

Mr Pullen said he was worried about the government's proposal because he believed it would be almost impossible to define "privacy" in a way that eliminated legal uncertainty. He said the government's priority should be to determine whether there were enough infringements to justify a new legal action. It should focus on trying to confine the definition of privacy to those areas considered appropriate, and only then should it turn to the question of defences.

Mr Pullen's concern comes soon after Privacy Minister Brendan O'Connor said the new civil action would contain a "public interest" defence for the media.

Mr Pullen and Mr Quill both dismissed the significance of the defence. Mr Pullen said the track record of the judiciary on free speech suggested that the defence was unlikely to be effective.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

Sunday, August 25, 2013

"Diverse" care of the elderly in Britain

Two healthcare assistants who abused elderly female patients on the geriatric ward of a hospital were jailed today.

Akousa Sakyiwaa, 38, was convicted of four counts of ill-treatment and neglect of patients on Beech Ward at Whipps Cross University Hospital in Leytonstone, east London, between February and April last year.

Sharmila Gunda, 36, was found guilty of one count of neglect and one count of assault by beating an elderly patient in her care following a trial in June.

Sakyiwaa, of Leytonstone, was jailed for 12 months while Gunda, of Ilford, was given a five month prison sentence at London's Snaresbrook Crown Court.

Fellow healthcare assistant Annette Jackson, 33, of Hounslow, west London, was given a two month suspended sentence and ordered to complete 100 hours unpaid work after being convicted of one count of ill-treatment or neglect.

Delivering his sentence, Judge Timothy Lamb QC said the women's actions had 'damaged patient trust' in the NHS.

Addressing the defendants, Mr Lamb said: 'In short, by your offending you have let down your colleagues, you have damaged patient trust and you have undermined the quality of care for the elderly and vulnerable at Whipps Cross.'

The three women were charged following a Metropolitan Police inquiry into the hospital after a student nurse acted as a whistleblower.

The women would physically and verbally abuse patients, often telling them to shut up, as well as handling them in a rough and aggressive manner, police said.

Sakyiwaa, of Leytonstone, Jackson, of Hounslow; and Gunda, of Ilford, were responsible for looking after elderly female patients with various physical and mental conditions including dementia.

June Evans, who is wheelchair bound, was the only patient still alive or well enough to come to court to give evidence against them. The other patients are too ill or suffer from dementia.

In a statement read to the court, she said: 'Since the incident that took place last year I have completely lost trust in the health service. 'I lost faith in my GP, the ambulance service and hospitals in general.'

Ms Evans discharged herself from the hospital following the assault and was in a state of distress when she had to return to Whipps Cross for further treatment. 'I wanted to die,' she said. 'I thought why couldn't I have a heart attack and end it.'

Sakyiwaa was found guilty of holding a bed sheet over 87-year-old Joan Massett’s head and telling her she was dead.

She pushed Ms Massett’s breasts in another incident and forcefully twisted her mouth which was both 'demeaning and completely unnecessary'.

Sakyiwaa shouted at 88-year-old patient Elizabeth Toussaint to force her to sit in a chair and slapped Louise Hodges, 92, after cleaning her, the hearing was told.

Jackson was found guilty of one count of neglecting patient Barbara Jones, while Gunda was found guilty of one charge of neglect and one charge of assault by beating June Evans.

Jurors heard the healthcare assistants were arrested after a student nurse Lucy Brown whistleblew on them following a placement on the ward last Spring.

John McNally, prosecuting, said: 'The conduct complained of simply had no place on any ward. It cannot be justified.'

Snaresbrook Crown Court heard 92-year-old Lily Oliver was admitted to the ward on March 27, 2012, suffering from septic arthritis in her left knee.

Mr McNally told jurors: 'She was bed bound and extremely frail and it is the expert’s professional opinion that she suffered from dementia and wasn’t able to make her own decisions.

'During the time she was on Beech Ward she was under the care of Akousa Sakyiwaa. 'Lucy Brown described Akousa Sakyiwaa as being extremely rough with Lily Oliver.

'In the course of one encounter Lucy Brown noted that when Miss Oliver’s bandages were removed Miss Oliver said ‘mind my leg.’

'After that Akousa Sakyiwaa grabbed her left knee with both her hands and pushed it towards Lucy Brown.

'This caused her to scream in pain and turn pale before falling silent. That, we say, is what constitutes ill treatment for that count.'

Opening the case, Mr McNally said: 'The prosecution case is they variously ill treated patients either by positive actions towards them or by failing to look after them when they should have.

'The defendants worked on a geriatric ward and were trusted to provide the most basic tasks.

'There is little doubt some of these would have been unpleasant and that elderly and demented patients could be obstructive.

'However, this factor only serves to highlight the vulnerability of these patients and outline the fact that providing care professionally was the responsibility of each defendant.

'An entitlement for proper care should not be a matter of chance given at the whim of the carer.'

The court heard the ward has since closed down following a Metropolitan Police investigation into alleged abuse.

Barts Health NHS trust, which runs the hospital, apologised to patients following the verdicts and stressed it had a 'zero tolerance approach' to any form of neglect or ill-treatment.

In a statement, the trust said: 'We apologise unreservedly to the patients of Beech Ward and their families for the indefensible failings in their treatment during their time in our care.

'There can be no place under any circumstances for such behaviour in our trust or in the wider NHS.'

It added that following an internal disciplinary investigation all three women had their contracts of employment terminated. It added: 'We take a zero tolerance approach to any form of neglect or ill-treatment of our patients and applaud the student nurses who showed courage and integrity in raising the alarm.

'It is the duty of every member of staff to report such behaviour and we will actively encourage and support this through our whistleblowing policy which is made clear to all staff on day one of their employment with the Trust, with ongoing reminders to existing staff during regular statutory and mandatory training.

'Moreover, we will take action against any member of staff who turns a blind eye, or fails to take immediate and appropriate action, if they witness any form of abuse or negligence.'

Barts Health NHS Trust was issued with three formal warnings last week after inspectors found 'unsafe' conditions at Whipps Cross including filthy maternity wards and water placed out of the reach of elderly patients.

The trust had 'failed to protect the safety and welfare of patients' and must now make 'urgent improvements' following unannounced inspections in May and June, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) said.

Following the sentencing, Detective Sergeant Tammy Dempsey, from the Met's Community Safety Unit in Waltham Forest, said: 'These three women had a responsibility for the welfare of those who were under their care.

'The public and families of these elderly patients have a right to expect that they will be treated with respect and looked after in an appropriate manner.

'Gunda, Jackson and Sakyiwaa let everyone down and it's right that they have been found guilty at court.

'I would like to take this opportunity to thank those who had the courage to come forward and report these offences and give their evidence in court.'

THE teenagers charged over the murder of Melbourne man Chris Lane will be isolated from one another and other inmates in an Oklahoma jail as long as they are there.

District Attorney Jason Hicks said yesterday that it could be months or longer before the three - James Edwards, 15, Chancey Luna, 16, and Michael Jones, 17 - would face trial. It was too early to say whether they would be tried separately or together. Their next hearings are in October.

It comes as Edwards, who has been charged with first-degree murder, posted racist tweets saying he hated white people in the months before the shooting.

Edwards posted statements on his Twitter feed including a comment on April 29 where he tweeted "90% of white ppl are nasty. #HATE THEM".

Edwards also weighed when George Zimmerman was acquitted over the death of Trayvon Martin.

A young white male was walking to his car on a city street late at night on August 12 when he was confronted by a trio of black individuals. They shot him dead. Police have arrested three people and charged them with first degree murder. But some in the victim’s family can’t understand why the shooting is being called a failed robbery when they say the evidence suggests something possibly more sinister: a hate crime.

David Santucci, 27, had just started his new job as a nurse. According to his family, “he was an awesome guy…he wanted to be a missionary…he wanted to help people.”

The murder happened in Memphis, TN less than two weeks ago. Santucci was killed by a single 9mm shot through his heart. To its credit, the Memphis police department apprehended the suspects in less than fifteen minutes. Various reports say that all three suspects made statements that implicated them in Santucci’s murder. And they’re calling it a robbery gone wrong.

Miguel De Diago is one family member who doubts this killing was a failed robbery. He’s the the brother-in-law of David Santucci and told TheBlaze some stuff just doesn’t add up.

The first and foremost question in De Diago’s mind: If this was a robbery, why did his brother-in-law still have his wallet, car keys, and cell phone? Nothing was taken from him. And witnesses confirm that.

Murder suspects

Since the killing, Miguel has worked tirelessly to track down the good Samaritans who rushed to the aid of his brother-in-law as he lay bleeding on the sidewalk. He managed to track down the first three to get to David’s side, Taneshia, Sharae and Brittany. Arriving first on the scene, Sharae tried to apply pressure to the wound in order to stop the bleeding. Brittany searched through David’s phone and tried to call a family member, and Taneshia held David Santucci’s hand and led them all in prayer.

In addition to the fact that Santucci was still in possession of his phone and wallet, Miguel says witnesses told police that the car drove past David, stopped and backed up. One of the suspects (Mario Patterson) got out of the car and walked toward Santucci, fired a shot and ran back to the car, jumping into the driver’s seat and speeding off. Miguel also says the police told him that the 9mm shell casing was found 10 feet from the body — an indication to him that the shooter was not at close range as would typically happen with a robbery.

Miguel told TheBlaze that he tracked the alleged shooter, Patterson through his Facebook account — an account now deleted. He said the page had numerous photos of Trayvon Martin, and he wondered if it’s possible the shooting was a revenge killing for the Zimmerman verdict.

So why call it a robbery? Miguel wonders if the killing is being labeled as such because of the neighborhood’s proximity to Beale Street, the biggest tourist attraction in downtown Memphis. (Elvis Presley’s family home of Graceland is a bit outside of town.) If Beale Street becomes riddled with crime and killings with no explanation, Memphis tourism could suffer considerably.

On April 26 of this year, I was on a train with my five-year-old son Charlie. We were on our way to spend shabbat with friends in the city. You see, our town, significant in the history of Swedish Jewry, shut its synagogue in the late 90s. All that remains now is a plaque stating that there was once Jewish life here, while we are left with an hour-long train ride every weekend to attend services.

My son was wearing his kippah as we got on the train. He loves his kippah. He is not yet old enough to know the dangers entailed in wearing it, for this is a fact from which I have tried to protect him. But April 26 would change all that.

There was a gentleman sitting in our reserved seat. An Arab, maybe fifty years old, listening to music. Apologizing for the inconvenience, I asked him politely for our seat. He got up, inspected my son, and then leaned over me, saying: You people always take what you want. You need to learn.

He then walked straight into my son, causing him to fall over, and took the seat behind us.

We sat. Hiding my trembling hands from my son’s sight, I picked up Shabbes for Kids and started to review the week’s Torah portion with him. We hadn’t progressed as far as a page before the man stood up and screamed: Quiet! I don’t want to hear that! You take what you want and never think of others! Shut up!

He stamped his feet, grunting and glaring at my son. Fighting tears of rage, I assured Charlie that the man was just grumpy and tried to turned the episode into a game, one that required us to remain super quiet for as long as possible. I even managed to coax a conspiratorial smile out of him.

But even this failed to appease our tormentor, who spent the rest of the trip repeatedly kicking the back of my son’s seat. At one point I glanced around our compartment: there were four other people there, four adults witnessing a single mother and her five-year-old child being attacked by a grown man. They did nothing. I tried forcing them to meet my gaze; but they just turned away, put on their headphones, stared at their screens, ignored what was happening in front of them.

I did not summon the railway police. I did not scream back at the man. I know better. I know that the only way to survive as a Jew in my country is not to be seen as one. Not to be exposed but to shut up and fade into the woodwork. I’ve known this for quite some time. Unfortunately, my son knows it now, too.

In your fascinating and informative article you mention that ritual slaughter, kosher as well as hallal, is under threat in Europe. Well, in Sweden kosher butchering was outlawed in 1937 and has been illegal ever since. The threat is not a threat but a reality—for me as, on a much graver scale, it had been for my grandparents, forced into hiding in a Sweden silently collaborating with the Nazis throughout the world war. The next threat on the horizon is a ban on even importing kosher products, compelling me and many of my friends to smuggle kosher meat from Israel on our return trips from that land.

By contrast, halal slaughter is not banned in Sweden. My government, when asked about the disparity, replies that the methods of slaughter in Judaism are uniquely barbaric.

“Barbaric” is also what I was called just this past June. As a political adviser to a Swedish party, I was debating the anti-circumcision bill that had just been proposed by another, right-wing party in our parliament, and things got heated. The bill called for a general ban on all circumcision unless medically prescribed, and it enjoyed much bipartisan support. During the debate, I outed myself as a Jew, only to be informed that what “we” were doing to our children was inhumane and barbaric, and should be summarily outlawed. I did my best to maintain my composure, but ended up crying in the courtyard—not for the first time, or for the last.

In your essay you mention that Jewish religious and cultural activities in Western Europe are everywhere on the rise. This, too, is not my reality. What I see is that the Holocaust wing at the Jewish Museum is crowded with visitors, while the synagogues are empty. I see cute Woody Allen-ish activities being promoted, and actual Jewish life being banned. The dead, suffering Jew is glorified; the healthy, active Jew is vilified.

There are 20,000 Jews in Sweden, a country of close to nine million. As for Muslim immigrants and their children, they, as you point out in your article, amount to 10 percent or more of the population: perhaps as many as a million people, fifty times the number of Jews. Still, I would not say that demography is the only threat to Jewish life in Western Europe, and maybe not even the biggest one. What frightens me most is that my government is proscribing Jewish life. Yes, by outlawing circumcision, banning kosher slaughter, and telling us forthrightly that the only way to avoid being harassed in the streets is to distance ourselves from Israel, they are reinventing the conditions of the Eastern Europe past that brought our community to this country in the first place. This is what is driving us out: one by one, bill by bill.

In the “Comments” section following your essay, I noticed a debate among readers over the perceived harshness of your article. I am writing to you because I do not believe it was harsh enough. I value Jewish thought, but I crave Jewish action. More than I need eloquent eulogies, I need people—the same people who so passionately debate our future in Mosaic and elsewhere—to help me fight.

We in Sweden are still here, but we are feeling lonely and forgotten. We want a strong Jewish community in the Diaspora. We want to live. We are fighting every day against the pressure to turn us into plaques on the wall of former synagogues or into exhibits in guilt-wallowing museums. We need the help of our kinsmen.

My son no longer wears his kippah in public. Now he does what the men at my shul have done for years. He carries it in his pocket, donning it only when we are safely within the iron gates. Guarded and hidden from the world.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

Background

The most beautiful woman in the world? I think she was. Yes: It's Agnetha Fältskog

A beautiful baby is king -- with blue eyes, blond hair and white skin. How incorrect can you get?

Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair

Enough said

A face of Leftist hate: Cory Booker, (D-NJ)

There really is an actress named Donna Air. She seems a pleasant enough woman, though

What feminism has wrought:

There's actually some wisdom there. The dreamy lady says she is holding out for someone who meets her standards. The other lady reasonably replies "There's nobody there". Standards can be unrealistically high and feminists have laboured mightily to make them so

Some bright spark occasionally decides that Leftism is feminine and conservatism is masculine. That totally misses the point. If true, how come the vote in American presidential elections usually shows something close to a 50/50 split between men and women? And in the 2016 Presidential election, Trump won 53 percent of white women, despite allegations focused on his past treatment of some women.

Political correctness is Fascism pretending to be manners

Political Correctness is as big a threat to free speech as Communism and Fascism. All 3 were/are socialist.

The problem with minorities is not race but culture. For instance, many American black males fit in well with the majority culture. They go to college, work legally for their living, marry and support the mother of their children, go to church, abstain from crime and are considerate towards others. Who could reasonably object to such people? It is people who subscribe to minority cultures -- black, Latino or Muslim -- who can give rise to concern. If antisocial attitudes and/or behaviour become pervasive among a group, however, policies may reasonably devised to deal with that group as a whole

Black lives DON'T matter -- to other blacks. The leading cause of death among young black males is attack by other young black males

Leftist logic: There are allegedly no distinctions between groups of humans, yet we're still supposed to celebrate diversity.

Identity politics is a form of racism

'White Privilege'. .. Oh yes. .. That was abundant in the Irish potato famines. ... And in the Scottish Highland Clearances. ...And in transportations to Australia. ... And in Workhouses. ... 'White privilege' was absolutely RIFE!

Psychological defence mechanisms such as projection play a large part in Leftist thinking and discourse. So their frantic search for evil in the words and deeds of others is easily understandable. The evil is in themselves. Leftist motivations are fundamentally Fascist. They want to "fundamentally transform" the lives of their fellow citizens, which is as authoritarian as you can get. We saw where it led in Russia and China. The "compassion" that Leftists parade is just a cloak for their ghastly real motivations

Occasionally I put up on this blog complaints about the privileged position of homosexuals in today's world. I look forward to the day when the pendulum swings back and homosexuals are treated as equals before the law. To a simple Leftist mind, that makes me "homophobic", even though I have no fear of any kind of homosexuals.

But I thought it might be useful for me to point out a few things. For a start, I am not unwise enough to say that some of my best friends are homosexual. None are, in fact. Though there are two homosexuals in my normal social circle whom I get on well with and whom I think well of.

Of possible relevance: My late sister was a homosexual; I loved Liberace's sense of humour and I thought that Robert Helpmann was marvellous as Don Quixote in the Nureyev ballet of that name.

One may say that the person who gets in trouble with drugs is just as dumb without them

I record on this blog many examples of negligent, inefficient and reprehensible behaviour on the part of British police. After 13 years of Labour party rule they have become highly politicized, with values that reflect the demands made on them by the political Left rather than than what the community expects of them. They have become lazy and cowardly and avoid dealing with real crime wherever possible -- preferring instead to harass normal decent people for minor infractions -- particularly offences against political correctness. They are an excellent example of the destruction that can be brought about by Leftist meddling.

I also record on this blog much social worker evil -- particularly British social worker evil. The evil is neither negligent nor random. It follows exactly the pattern you would expect from the Marxist-oriented indoctrination they get in social work school -- where the middle class is seen as the enemy and the underclass is seen as virtuous. So social workers are lightning fast to take children away from normal decent parents on the basis of of minor or imaginary infractions while turning a blind eye to gross child abuse by the underclass

The genetics of crime: I have been pointing out for some time the evidence that there is a substantial genetic element in criminality. Some people are born bad. See here, here, here, here (DOI: 10.1111/jcpp.12581) and here, for instance"

Gender is a property of words, not of people. Using it otherwise is just another politically correct distortion -- though not as pernicious as calling racial discrimination "Affirmative action"

Postmodernism is fundamentally frivolous. Postmodernists routinely condemn racism and intolerance as wrong but then say that there is no such thing as right and wrong. They are clearly not being serious. Either they do not really believe in moral nihilism or they believe that racism cannot be condemned!

Postmodernism is in fact just a tantrum. Post-Soviet reality in particular suits Leftists so badly that their response is to deny that reality exists. That they can be so dishonest, however, simply shows how psychopathic they are.

So why do Leftists say "There is no such thing as right and wrong" when backed into a rhetorical corner? They say it because that is the predominant conclusion of analytic philosophers. And, as Keynes said: "Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back”

Juergen Habermas, a veteran leftist German philosopher stunned his admirers not long ago by proclaiming, "Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization. To this day, we have no other options [than Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter."

Consider two "jokes" below:

Q. "Why are Leftists always standing up for blacks and homosexuals?

A. Because for all three groups their only God is their penis"

Pretty offensive, right? So consider this one:

Q. "Why are evangelical Christians like the Taliban?

A. They are both religious fundamentalists"

The latter "joke" is not a joke at all, of course. It is a comparison routinely touted by Leftists. Both "jokes" are greatly offensive and unfair to the parties targeted but one gets a pass without question while the other would bring great wrath on the head of anyone uttering it. Why? Because political correctness is in fact just Leftist bigotry. Bigotry is unfairly favouring one or more groups of people over others -- usually justified as "truth".

One of my more amusing memories is from the time when the Soviet Union still existed and I was teaching sociology in a major Australian university. On one memorable occasion, we had a representative of the Soviet Womens' organization visit us -- a stout and heavily made-up lady of mature years. When she was ushered into our conference room, she was greeted with something like adulation by the local Marxists. In question time after her talk, however, someone asked her how homosexuals were treated in the USSR. She replied: "We don't have any. That was before the revolution". The consternation and confusion that produced among my Leftist colleagues was hilarious to behold and still lives vividly in my memory. The more things change, the more they remain the same, however. In Sept. 2007 President Ahmadinejad told Columbia university that there are no homosexuals in Iran.

It is widely agreed (with mainly Lesbians dissenting) that boys need their fathers. What needs much wider recognition is that girls need their fathers too. The relationship between a "Daddy's girl" and her father is perhaps the most beautiful human relationship there is. It can help give the girl concerned inner strength for the rest of her life.

A modern feminist complains: "We are so far from “having it all” that “we barely even have a slice of the pie, which we probably baked ourselves while sobbing into the pastry at 4am”."

Patriotism does NOT in general go with hostilty towards others. See e.g. here and here and even here ("Ethnocentrism and Xenophobia: A Cross-Cultural Study" by anthropologist Elizabeth Cashdan. In Current Anthropology Vol. 42, No. 5, December 2001).

The love of bureaucracy is very Leftist and hence "correct". Who said this? "Account must be taken of every single article, every pound of grain, because what socialism implies above all is keeping account of everything". It was V.I. Lenin

"An objection I hear frequently is: ‘Why should we tolerate intolerance?’ The assumption is that tolerating views that you don’t agree with is like a gift, an act of kindness. It suggests we’re doing people a favour by tolerating their view. My argument is that tolerance is vital to us, to you and I, because it’s actually the presupposition of all our freedoms. You cannot be free in any meaningful sense unless there is a recognition that we are free to act on our beliefs, we’re free to think what we want and express ourselves freely. Unless we have that freedom, all those other freedoms that we have on paper mean nothing" -- SOURCE

Although it is a popular traditional chant, the "Kol Nidre" should be abandoned by modern Jewish congregations. It was totally understandable where it originated in the Middle Ages but is morally obnoxious in the modern world and vivid "proof" of all sorts of antisemitic stereotypes

What the Bible says about homosexuality:

"Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind; It is abomination" -- Lev. 18:22

In his great diatribe against the pagan Romans, the apostle Paul included homosexuality among their sins:

"For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature. And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.... Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them" -- Romans 1:26,27,32.

So churches that condone homosexuality are clearly post-Christian

Although I am an atheist, I have great respect for the wisdom of ancient times as collected in the Bible. And its condemnation of homosexuality makes considerable sense to me. In an era when family values are under constant assault, such a return to the basics could be helpful. Nonetheless, I approve of St. Paul's advice in the second chapter of his epistle to the Romans that it is for God to punish them, not us. In secular terms, homosexuality between consenting adults in private should not be penalized but nor should it be promoted or praised. In Christian terms, "Gay pride" is of the Devil

The homosexuals of Gibeah (Judges 19 & 20) set in train a series of events which brought down great wrath and destruction on their tribe. The tribe of Benjamin was almost wiped out when it would not disown its homosexuals. Are we seeing a related process in the woes presently being experienced by the amoral Western world? Note that there was one Western country that was not affected by the global financial crisis and subsequently had no debt problems: Australia. In September 2012 the Australian federal parliament considered a bill to implement homosexual marriage. It was rejected by a large majority -- including members from both major political parties. The tide turned in 2017, however, with a public vote authorizing homosexual marriage in Australia

Religion is deeply human. The recent discoveries at Gobekli Tepe suggest that it was religion not farming that gave birth to civilization. Early civilizations were at any rate all very religious. Atheism is mainly a very modern development and is even now very much a minority opinion

"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" - Isaiah 5:20 (KJV)

I think it's not unreasonable to see Islam as the religion of the Devil. Any religion that loves death or leads to parents rejoicing when their children blow themselves up is surely of the Devil -- however you conceive of the Devil. Whether he is a man in a red suit with horns and a tail, a fallen spirit being, or simply the evil side of human nature hardly matters. In all cases Islam is clearly anti-life and only the Devil or his disciples could rejoice in that.

And there surely could be few lower forms of human behaviour than to give abuse and harm in return for help. The compassionate practices of countries with Christian traditions have led many such countries to give a new home to Muslim refugees and seekers after a better life. It's basic humanity that such kindness should attract gratitude and appreciation. But do Muslims appreciate it? They most commonly show contempt for the countries and societies concerned. That's another sign of Satanic influence.

And how's this for demonic thinking?: "Asian father whose daughter drowned in Dubai sea 'stopped lifeguards from saving her because he didn't want her touched and dishonoured by strange men'

Islamic terrorism isn’t a perversion of Islam. It’s the implementation of Islam. It is not a religion of the persecuted, but the persecutors. Its theology is violent supremacism.

And where Muslims tell us that they love death, the great Christian celebration is of the birth of a baby -- the monogenes theos (only begotten god) as John 1:18 describes it in the original Greek -- Christmas!

No wonder so many Muslims are hostile and angry. They have little companionship from women and not even any companionship from dogs -- which are emotionally important in most other cultures. Dogs are "unclean"

On all my blogs, I express my view of what is important primarily by the readings that I select for posting. I do however on occasions add personal comments in italicized form at the beginning of an article.

I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age.

I imagine that the the RD is still sending mailouts to my 1950s address!

Germaine Greer is a stupid old Harpy who is notable only for the depth and extent of her hatreds

There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)

Note: If the link to one of my articles is not working, the article concerned can generally be viewed by prefixing to the filename the following: http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/42197/20121106-1520/jonjayray.comuv.com/

NOTE: The archives provided by blogspot below are rather inconvenient. They break each month up into small bits. If you want to scan whole months at a time, the backup archives will suit better. See here or here